Why Shakespeare Adaptations Suck

Adaptations are incredibly common in the film industry. Book-to-film, television-to-film, true story-to-film—there’s a reason why “Best Adapted Screenplay” is its own category at the Academy Awards. The issue with adapting a theatre script for film is that plays and screenplays have vastly different structure.

In playwriting, dialogue is the most important component. The original cast or workshop cast of a play has a major influence on written actions. Many scripts do not have parentheticals until after the first production. Parentheticals are added prior to publishing, usually in collaboration with the original director and/cast.

In Shakespeare’s day, actors only received the bits of the play with their own lines. Whole scripts were not common practice until much later. Famous pieces of stage directions, such as “Ext. Pursued by a bear” from The Winter’s Tale, were important enough to write down. Original stage directions are lost to history, but important entrances and exits are part of the dialogue.

In screenwriting, the dialogue is less important than everything else going on in the script. Scene description sets the mood for the entire scene. A screenwriter has much more control over how actors move than a playwright does. In both cases, an actor will build onto written character, but a screenwriter might write that a character blinks twice, whereas a playwright will not. You cannot see blinking on stage.

Written differences aside, the reason that plays — specifically Shakespeare’s plays — do not translate well to screen is the difference in the audience. Plays are written to be performed live. The audience is a part of the show. Even a quiet, demure audience contributes the sounds of their breathing and their energy to a performance. Live theatre will never be the same twice.

Each time you watch a film, it is exactly the same. Extra scenes and directors’ cuts also remain the same, though different from the original film. On screen, what we see as an audience is the result of cutting and pasting scenes to perfection. Shakespeare film adaptations throw their characters into elaborate settings, with numerous costume changes, reaching for another film category. Shakespeare’s comedies can never be true rom-com. I don’t care which hotties of the day you throw in them.

Even with the most talented actors, onscreen, Shakespeare’s plays feel contrived and dry. Recent adaptions have everything: budget, actors, sets, costumes, but they still miss the mark. What’s missing? The spirit. The energy of live theatre. Nothing can replace live theatre, but live theatre is simply not accessible for everyone. Film adaptations make Shakespeare accessible for many, which I can appreciate. There are a few adaptions that I will happily watch.